famous for nothing... or for something?

After a wonderful and hilarious weekend spent with a group of my old university friends, I set today aside to do a lot of housework. The carpet wants scrubbing (well, the carpet always wants scrubbing; black cat + cream carpet = constant fluff), there's an enormous pile of laundry to be done and the beds need changing. Just at the moment, though, Joshy and I are having a break from this domestic activity and watching 'Bagpuss', and a very nice time we're having too. 

Before turning on the TV I made a cup of tea, microwaved a piece of cake, and then took a further moment to book a smear test. I am due, but not overdue, to have one and had been advised by my GP to wait for about three months after giving birth before going for my next one; as Joshua is four months old, it was about time I actually made the appointment. So I shall now look forward to Tuesday 3rd March at 3pm, with a certain amount of trepidation. Smears are not dignified, it must be said. They're not excessively painful, but it's hardly as if they're administered using the nice end of a feather. However, in common with all the thousands of other women who have recently stopped procrastinating and got on the phone to their local surgery to arrange their next smear, for me those two concerns paled somewhat into insignificance upon reading in the papers about Jade Goody's struggle with cervical cancer, which is likely to claim her life in the not too distant future. On Saturday, one of my university friends (who has experienced her own brush with cancer but is entirely free of it now, to everyone's immeasurable relief) commented, apropos of Jade, "I feel so sorry for her... that could have been me, having to leave my children behind...". That was all the reminder I needed to get my act together and make the appointment, and it has also served to cement my attitude towards Jade Goody, having read far more about her in the papers during the past few weeks than when she was in the 'Big Brother' house in 2002. 

Since such programmes became annual staples of TV, making famous people like Chantelle Houghton (who was brought onto one show - I forget which - to see if the other contestants could be fooled into thinking she was a 'celebrity' of whom they had not previously heard), yards and yards have been written on the subject of the new 'celebrity culture' by those who consider the championing of apparently talentless and fame-hungry types to be a national disgrace. And even as Jade Goody grows frailer, discussion forums are getting busier; depending upon the publication you read, contributors are either leaving comments of the "thinking of you Jade - stay strong" variety, or taking the opportunity to air disapproving opinions about that which Jade stands for. 'Debates' are springing up all over the place, in which people discuss Jade's decision to play out her illness in full view of the public, or indeed her 'right' to be in the public eye in the first place. Seldom has a person's life and likely death been so much of a focus for so many, and it is interesting to note that almost none of the newspaper articles written about her during the past months have felt the need to define, label and identify her, as are almost all other famous people. Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Harriet Harman and Hugh Dennis are all routinely prefixed by the words 'celebrity chef', 'domestic goddess', 'deputy Labour leader' or 'comedian' when mentioned in the media, but Jade Goody now needs no such introduction. Perhaps, like Stephen Fry, she is famous for so many things it would be difficult to select just one by which to encapsulate her. But, whatever the reason, she has become ubiquitous over the past six years, and as she prepares to die, the interest in her shows no sign of abating. Someone has predicted that a film will be made of her life story. Someone else wrote at the weekend that "you couldn't make this woman's life up... her story is almost operatic". Almost everyone now knows about the challenging circumstances from whence Jade came, and few can be unaware of her meteoric rise to fame by way of 'Big Brother', 'What Jade Did Next' and her many other subsequent ventures. She has been accused variously over the years of being thick, uneducated, coarse, racist, and a poster-girl for the unfortunate and gradual decline of 'Great' Britain; now, in what will probably be the final weeks of her life, you are more likely to hear words like 'inspirational', 'brave' and 'courageous' being applied to her. The flow of bile really has stopped, and rightly so; it is obviously unacceptable to kick someone whilst they are so very down, and as they stare death in the face knowing there is no chance of recovery. Jade will undoubtedly be remembered for years to come, and although she has far more important things to think about and to do at the moment, like ensuring her beloved sons will be properly cared for, she will certainly leave a legacy, as indeed we all do to some degree. And, putting the tremendous sadness of the situation aside for a moment, it is really interesting to consider how that legacy might manifest itself, because of how she has been regarded until very recently.

Jade has probably amused, offended, entertained and irritated in fairly equal measure since she initially burst onto our screens in 2002. Never one to think too carefully before she spoke, she managed to spark off a furious public debate on racism after making a couple of ill-advised comments about Shilpa Shetty on 'Celebrity Big Brother', and the nation variously enjoyed her mispronunciation of words and the geographical confusion she displayed in the Big Brother house and which were gleefully quoted and re-quoted during the ensuing five years. During this period everyone watched, open-mouthed, as she became more and more famous and wealthy simply for being herself, followed as she was by a constant crew of TV cameras and producers who were queuing up to cash in on her bewildering success. This was the first time this had really happened, as previously people tended to become well-known for being or doing something significant. And this was the problem that so many people have had with Jade Goody: she was famous for no discernable reason, and there were plenty who didn't like the idea of that. Reams have been written since her cancer diagnosis became public about the millions of other, unknown but dearly loved, people who have fallen victim to this appalling disease and who have not had the access to the hundreds of thousands of pounds that are currently coming Jade's way. That is understandable, and no one ever said life was fair. It isn't, and there are no two ways about that. But it's important to remember that the vast sum of money for which Jade and her new husband sold the rights to their Sunday wedding will not be spent on her own enjoyment. She won't be buying clothes, BMWs, a vulgar mansion or a new beauty salon; there would be no point in a dying woman doing such a thing. She has pledged publicly to put it all in savings for her two little boys, who - like all children - deserve a good education, something which Jade didn't receive herself. Perhaps they will, as a result, grow up with some of the advantages their mother didn't herself enjoy, and will make something very worthwhile of themselves. That can only be a good thing. And, as a mother myself, I can only imagine how Jade's entire family must be feeling at the moment, but most importantly how Jade herself must feel when she remembers that she ignored the abnormal result of a smear. I am sure she must be struggling with an unenviable mixture of guilt, despair and incredible sadness at the thought that she has only had a few years with her children. For that reason alone she deserves nothing but sympathy, care and support in these last weeks of her life. She is prepared to live out the rest of her life in front of the cameras for the sake of her little sons, and will not herself benefit from this one jot.  

Roy Castle, Ruth Picardie and John Diamond all wrote and spoke about their respective battles with cancer, to a mostly appreciative audience. That they did so with dignity and well-chosen words is to their credit. They were all well-regarded for both their talents and their willingness to speak out honestly about the experiences they and their families faced as a result of their illnesses, and they have all left behind much of which their loved ones can be proud - legacies of entertainment and fun, excellent writing, wonderful memories, an increased awareness of the dangers of smoking and passive smoking, and fundraising charities which strive to defeat cancer and offer a cure to millions. Jade should not be denied her legacy, too - if the experts are correct, and the "Jade Goody Effect" has spurred as many on to book overdue smears as they say, then every woman in the country should be grateful to her for publicising cervical cancer, because perhaps their lives will be saved for this reason. Whether or not she intended this to happen is entirely beside the point. She has raised awareness of a disease which will take her life from her many more years before she was ready to surrender it, and there can't be many women in Britain who haven't recently taken a moment to work out when their next smear is due . It matters nothing that this has happened because of a former Big Brother contestant; the important thing is that more women, including myself, have Jade Goody partly to thank for the reminder that life is precious. And this, more than anything else, should be how she is remembered, as it is one achievement which truly merits the fame she has courted for so long.  

happy birthday facebook

Today is Facebook's fifth birthday, which should mean cake, gifts and general merriment all round. But whilst 150 million users are enjoying the celebrations, there are plenty more who have been taking the opportunity to indulge in a bit of birthday bah-humbuggery. Rory Cellan-Jones has tired of FB and is currently Tweeting instead, but nevertheless acknowledged Facebook's milestone on BBC News today, and the Magazine Monitor asked its readers to complete the sentence "I've never joined Facebook because..." Over a hundred people have responded so far, some of whom spoke out in defence of their favourite social-networking site in response to the anti-Facebookers who "have a life", "have no desire to be contacted by old acquaintances", "can't see the point" and believe it to be "a fad". Many of those heaping scorn on Facebook clearly didn't know a great deal about it, imagining themselves in danger at best of being buried alive by a deluge of primary-school peers seeking renewed "friendship", and at worst of identity fraud. Such a fuss! As all Facebookers know, you don't have to accept friendship requests if you don't want to; you can raise your privacy settings sky-high to avoid soliciations from people by whom you'd rather not be contacted or "poked" (which might include a teacher's school pupils, or someone you don't really know but is clearly on the lookout for a 573rd "friend" to add to her popularity list, or your boss); and you should never post any piece of information which you would be unwilling to have printed on a T-shirt to wear whilst shopping in the January sales. It's common sense, and the 150 million partygoers know it, but there will always be an army of self-righteous types out there who are ready to boast about evenings down the pub with their "real friends" and issue put-downs to those of us who use Facebook on a regular basis for everything from photo-sharing to events planning. They are, of course, perfectly entitled to their opinion, and much may they enjoy their evenings down the pub with the three-dimensional people, is what I say!

But let's be charitable instead, and use this auspicious date to say a thing or two in praise of Facebook, for there are clearly many of us who rather like it and find it useful. Indeed, I believe Facebook to be the only social networking site which is becoming as widely used by "older" people as by teenagers and students. Wikipedia isn't hugely forthcoming on the subject, but it seems to me that an increasing number of people between 30 and 70 are signing up and using Facebook on a fairly regular basis. Granted, they might not all be enthusiastically availing themselves of the multitudinous "apps" on offer, or running around "poking" fellow pensioners, but plenty of us are logging on daily, yet still finding time to write letters to elderly relatives who don't own a computer, play real games of Scrabble using a pen and not a mouse for scoring, and go to the pub with friends who live locally. So why do we need Facebook, or at least why do we bother with it?

My favourite costume drama is, without a doubt, the BBC's Cranford, and I became very overexcited upon learning that a Cranford Christmas Special is planned for December 2009. The joy! Only ten short months to go until I can once again revel in Imelda Staunton's exquisite facial expressions and breathlessly-delivered nuggets of gossip in her role as Miss Octavia Pole, Elizabeth Gaskell's beautifully crafted phrases ("A man is so in the way in a house!"), and the many delightful aspects of life in Victorian society. Set in the 1840s, Cranford tells the tale of a Cheshire village inhabited mainly by women, all of whom are devotees of "elegant economy" and "polite codes". They are also against change of almost any kind, and fiercely oppose the imminent arrival of a railway line which will allow outsiders to pass through and into their beloved village with gay abandon. Until then, they have enjoyed the benefits of a close and almost closed community, which they are loath to give up. There are disadvantages, to be sure: everyone knows everyone else's business, including who turned down whose proposal of marriage thirty years ago; the news of Queen Victoria's newborn daughter's birth is not accessed immediately via the Internet but instead some days later via Miss Pole (as is every other piece of news); and Dr Harrison finds himself in danger of being unable to perform a new-fangled operation upon a patient with a broken arm, because Johnson's Universal Stores are unable to provide him with candles (and therefore light) until Friday - by which time gangrene will surely have set in. But when the ladies of Cranford rally round and hand over their own precious candles in order that the operation can take place forthwith, the scene is so touching that it always causes a lump in my throat. When Dr Harrison expresses surprise at their kindness, and explains that "nothing like this is ever done in London", Miss Deborah Jenkyns sums up the essence of village life by responding "You're not in London, Dr Harrison; you're in Cranfordnow". She is surrounded by other ladies who later on in the series secretly club together to donate money anonymously to one of their number who finds herself unfortunately destitute as a result of a failed bank, and who keep he of the broken arm well-supplied with broth, jelly and rice pudding until his injury heals. Although the invention of an extensive transport system was undoubtedly a revolutionary, and in many ways wonderful, thing for post-Victorian Britain, it also contributed irreversibly to the erosion of the Cranfordesque community. And I am convinced that one of the reasons why many of us love both period dramas and Facebook is because we recognise the advantages and beauty of such a community, and cannot bear the idea of it not existing in some form. 

It goes without saying that there will always be families and friendships and ties that bind. The world cannot function otherwise, and for most people these relationships are by far the most important thing in their lives. But since trains, planes and automobiles were invented and came into widespread use, people no longer become educated, marry, live their lives and die in the same place in which they were born. This phenomenen is highly desirable for many reasons. Personally speaking, I would never have met Ben had I not studied at a university 170 miles from my home town. Many other people can say the same thing, and add career opportunities, travel experiences and the ability to function independently to the list of reasons why they are glad they moved away from home upon reaching adulthood. Yet many people, having studied and lived elsewhere, choose to move home again in the end, or at least near to their original home. As someone who is likely to do the same at some point in the next few years, I totally relate to the need to revert to familiar territory, with a close proximity to family members and friends who have done likewise. Obviously not everyone does this. But anyone who has lived in even one other place besides their birthplace is bound to acquire additional friends along the way, some of whom become lost in the mists of time but many of whom are retained and cherished, and it is for such people that Facebook exists. 

Families and friends who cannot manage to see each other every day or even more than once a year will necessarily miss out on occasions and milestones which hold significance in the lives of their loved ones. A primary reason for being on Facebook is often the chance it provides to look at photos, which have a tendency to clog up one's inbox annoyingly when emailed as attachments. For our baby son's grandparents and relatives and our friends, it provides a regular opportunity for them to see him growing up month by month. I really enjoy browsing through my friends' photos of their holidays, parties and snowscenes. Those who are not interested need not click on them! My brother and I live at opposite ends of the country, so I love that I can read a status updating which declares "Stewart is going to go fish that bath out of the skip at the bottom of the road. Bobsleigh!" and subsequently watch a hilarious video of him and his housemates sledging energetically down a hill sitting in the recently acquired bathtub.  And when I mentioned my love of sticky toffee pudding in my own status update the other evening, my friend Helen seconded my enthusiasm underneath, which means that when she next comes to stay I will be able to serve it to her for pudding, knowing she'll enjoy it! Helen, like a few others, is someone with whom I lost touch after we left school, not because I wanted to but because that is what happens sometimes in the busyness of life, and with whom I am delighted to be able to correspond easily and regularly now we have rediscovered each other. Until my maternity leave ends, I will rely on Facebook to keep me updated on the daily news from school. Secret chats with faraway friends are possible, as are amusingly random conversations between groups of us that went to university together and can no longer reminisce in person about college life because we live so far apart. Such things are to be relished alongside the pleasure of seeing local friends in person and spending weekends with those who live further away. And one of the nicest aspects of Facebook is the chance it gives you to encourage others and post happy comments on their walls. One of my dearest friends, Fiona, regularly brightens my day by leaving me lovely notes which I so much value, although I also see her in person every week. An excellent photographer I know regularly has her pictures complimented by appreciative friends, and I like being able to thank members of the church music group for playing so well the previous Sunday, even though I don't get out much in the evenings just now and can't easily call in on them to say thankyou in person, as I would do if I lived in Cranford in 1843. Facebook will also obligingly remind you of a forthcoming birthday if you find yourself struggling to remember such things, and will do so in enough time for you to send a card as well as scrawl a birthday greeting on your friend's wall.

No doubt Facebook can become a colossal waste of time if you allow it to morph into "Stalkerbook", searching for everyone with whom you've ever come into contact and spending entire evenings wading through photos of drunken near-strangers when you could be reading a book or talking on the phone. But it certainly isn't the sole domain of people who have too much time on their hands or are devoid of lives. In my humble opinion, it simply serves to facilitate the communities that most of us so much love being part of, in a twenty-first-century-sort-of-way. Happy Birthday Facebook; now let's go out to celebrate!